glorious toil of battle can be theirs. Abbot Samson found all
men more or less headstrong, irrational, prone to disorder;
continually threatening to prove ungovernable.

His lazy Monks gave him most trouble. 'My heart is tortured,'
said he, 'till we get out of debt, _cor meum cruciatum est.'_
Your heart, indeed;--but not altogether ours! By no devisable
method, or none of three or four that he devised, could Abbot
Samson get these Monks of his to keep their accounts straight;
but always, do as he might, the Cellerarius at the end of the
term is in a coil, in a flat deficit,--verging again towards debt
and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last declares sternly he will keep
our accounts too himself; will appoint an officer of his own to
see our Cellerarius keep them. Murmurs thereupon among us: Was
the like ever heard? Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very
Townsfolk know it: _subsannatio et derisio sumus,_ we have
become a laughingstock to mankind. The Norfolk barrator
and paltener!

And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the mere
economic department, how much in more complex ones, in spiritual
ones perhaps! He wears a stern calm face; raging and gnashing
teeth, _fremens_ and _frendens,_ many times, in the secret of his
mind. Withal, however, there is noble slow perseverance in him;
a strength of 'subdued rage' calculated to subdue most things:
always, in the long-run, he contrives to gain his point.


Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail; ever deeper
murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time, on slight cause,